I write this while sitting across from TD’s Rye Smoke Shop, inside one of approximately 20,000 Starbucks in the world. These stores were once all about coffee in the same way that the Smoke Shop was once mostly about smoking.

 

By TW McDermott

I write this while sitting across from TD’s Rye Smoke Shop, inside one of approximately 20,000 Starbucks in the world. These stores were once all about coffee in the same way that the Smoke Shop was once mostly about smoking.

 

Today, Starbucks is a clubhouse, shared office space, senior center, kinder-care space, conference room, start-up HQ, and all-purpose interview venue. It still serves coffee.

 

Rye Smoke Shop has also evolved into a meeting place, lottery dream emporium, candy store, magazine and newspaper stand, and, yes, tobacco shop. It is “old- fashioned” in the best sense of the word.

 

We all have a Smoke Shop in our lives, even if we did not grow up here. And, if you were lucky enough to have grown up in and around New York City in the Fifties, as I did, you may have had more than one Smoke Shop in your life.

 

A place we called “Joneses” comes to mind, so named despite being run in my day by one Sally Mallard, assisted by her son, Bert. There was also the La Primadora, aptly named for a popular cigar of the day, which was more similar to the Smoke Shop, although admittedly it lacked the charm. I distinctly remember buying many comic books there and then graduating to Playboy: a veritable university!

 

On a Friday afternoon in February, I followed a trail of young boys into Rye Smoke Shop. There were enough of them so that we very nearly filled the place. “Are you giving away free candy, Peggy?” I inquired. “No, she replied, “Even better. We have the new Swimsuit Issue,” as one pint-sized enthusiast unabashedly showed his pals a double-page spread. They had come for the eye candy, while others had come for their lottery tickets. We all have our dreams.

 

Somewhere right about now I imagine there are lawyers huddled together in a room with their client, a law-abiding, relatively successful real estate investor. They might be scratching their heads and thinking: How are we going to handle this fuss about The Smoke Shop? It’s so unfair. We need the space, and the market is the market.

 

Where have we heard this before? The market is the market. Except, of course, when it is not.

 

This would be a good time to take a walk to the corner at the other end of the block from The Little Shop That Could.

 

There sits a business that not so long ago some citizens were also afraid of losing, a commercial entity so deeply troubled that it might have gone up in, shall we dare to say it, smoke. Saving that enterprise was not so easy. There was some hand holding, cajoling, and, let’s face it, some skullduggery involved. But, we bailed it out. Saved it, because the alternative seemed just too frightening.

 

That little shop is, of course, JP Morgan Chase. One of the bastions of global capitalism, which combined the legacies of J.P. Morgan himself and the Rockefellers, as well as the Guaranty Trust Company, Manufacturers Hanover Bank, Chemical Bank, and Chase Manhattan just to mention a few. It is a whole shebang of money in the middle of every global financial market.

 

It is also a part of Main Street, which in these environs we rather perfectly call Purchase Street (Disclosure: I have an account there). Chase, one of our neighborhood banks, was considered Too Big To Fail.

 

Fair enough. JP Morgan Chase is not a villain in our story. They currently have their hands owing to the efforts of two traders named, and I do not make this up, Achilles and Bruno (aka The Whale), as well as several executives.

 

To those who will rise up on their “market is the market” soapbox to vehemently question why Rye Smoke Shop should be saved, I wish to point out that we have a local precedent on another corner in the middle of town, aka J.P Morgan Chase.

 

Why is this happening here, of all places, where so many make a living believing the market is the market? It cannot just be about nostalgia. Perhaps it’s because we’ve decided, at long last, that we’re willing to live with, even welcome, the Starbucks and JPMorgan Chases of the world in the fabric of our community, but not at the cost of ALL the little guys.

 

It may just be that we have to draw the line somewhere and we are trying to draw it here, now. Indeed, we may be taking an arbitrary stand. Good. If markets can be arbitrary, so can reasonable people. If not here, now, then where, when?

 

We may just be saying that there are some things we consider Too Small To Fail.